I've trudged through snow so deep on the Appalachian Trail above Grafton Notch that the snow covered the eye-level white blazes hikers in other seasons follow from Georgia to Katahdin.

On other trails, the ice is what got me.

In my cross-country skiing days, ice the trail would transform the "shush" of skis into the "clack " of skis. And I was so thankful for those trees I could grab as I went by...or sometimes skied right into, which thankfully stopped those clacking and out-of-control skiing adventures.

In those days, I was a cross-country-skiing tree hugger.

I once recall walking in my nice warm Dexter boots up Singepole Mountain one cold, cold...even colder winter night. There was snow, but it was, thankfully, as had been the deep snow on the AT, snow, not ice.

But on those trails in Acadia National Park, too much of that snow was the color clear.

Like the November or December day I climbed Cadillac's North Ridge Trail. Hiking happily along on this sunny snowless day, I crossed a 15-foot-wide slab rock on a fairly steep angle.

Only to discover it was covered with a thin coating of clear. Down I went, and I remember as I reached the bottom of that slab rock, thinking, "I probably should be more careful."

I wasn't hurt that day. In fact, the only day Ice that ever actually hurt me was once while I was standing still in the woods at Birdsacre in Ellsworth, an area of level trails.

Question: what could be more benign than a level trail? Answer: a level trail on which the snow where you were standing was not resting on glare ice.

I had been paused, taking a breath or two, idly clinging to a branch of a sampling. Suddenly, I was sitting. I don't recall a sore sitting place, but my hand was still clinging to that sampling, which was bent down to where I was sitting. My shoulder hurt pretty good.

Ice. It's what now keeps me off those Acadia trails.

Fairly often in my subconscious, which is what some who know me well think is how I operate even when I'm supposed to be conscious, I see a trail on the south end of Beech Mountain. Bearing the same name as a longer one on Cadillac, the South Ridge Trail has fun with a number of places where the trail kind of ends at an overlook and then does a hairpin turn back into the woods.

It was at those hairpin turns, overlooking a distance above the next lower level of the woods, that I found the most ice. Sometimes it was a foot thick.

I didn't know what caused it. Brad Viles in an article about winter hiking in the January 14 Bangor Daily News weekend edition, wrote it is because of so many streams. Funny, I don't recall any streams on or near those hairpin turns on South Ridge Trail. Just thick ice. My guess is the ice occurred because of the mountains' proximity to that damp ocean air.

Who knows? I kind of doubt Vile's reason for the ice. I also kind of doubt mine. I don't doubt that the ice was there and thick -- and very slippery.

Being poorer in those days than I am now and so not possessing a "cool" pair of L.L. Bean ice cleats, I learned to cope with that hairpin-turn ice via a different "old outdoorsman" trick. I clung to the saplings just below the hairpin turn, pulled myself by brute -- me being the brute -- force up through the woods, and bypassing the actual hairpin turn.

Hard to slip on thick ice and fall from a hairpin turn when you're clinging to a sapling in the woods a dozen feet "inland" from the turn.

The Great Pond Trail along the west shore of Long Pond in Acadia is typically covered by a thick coat of ice. This isn't on a mountain but at the foot of one and only a few feet above the level of the ice-covered lake. The problem with that trail for me were the frequent places I had to negotiate around or between ice-coated rocks.

I didn't slip and made sure I didn't. Who wants to fall into or onto an ice-covered pond.

On this warm January day, bare ground showed on much of the Wonderland Trail in Acadia National Park. Often from January into April, ice makes walking treacherous. Milt Gross photo.

One trek was up the Beech Mountain Loop's west trail early one winter. Near the summit, the trail heads a bit steeply up away from the not-as-steep section that overlooks Long Pond. As the trail became steeper -- the snow was already deeper -- and I clambered upward, I kept noticing two- or three-foot long bare places in the snow, revealing ice beneath. I wondered if this were the work of the Abominable Snow and Ice Guy of Southwest Harbor and why this guy left these strange markings in the snow.

As soon as I turned back, because I knew the east section of the trail down was much too steep for winter fun, I learned the answer. About every so many feet, my feet would slip and I would be sitting in the snow. I would also be sliding downward.

Leaving those identical elongated bare marks in the snow as the Abominable Guy had. No mystery now, though. It was from having to sit to go down.

Ice cleats would not have helped the seat of my pants.

Ice cleats do help with the ice with which I contend the most these days, the ice in our driveway.

On cold, windy days, I notice the ice tends to disappear, somehow blown away by that awful winter wind. (You can tell a writer's aging status by his or her description of that wind, changing from "refreshing" to "brisk" to "cold" to "too darn cold but I'm still not moving to Florida." At "awful," you know we're getting there.)

Last year Dolores and I broke down and bought two pairs of those handy, dandy ice cleats for both of us.

Luckily I have an extra pair of insulated slip-on shoes onto to which I fasten those cleats early in winter and leave them there until later in winter, say April or early May.

I haven't walked on the Wonderland Trail in Southwest Harbor in winter or April for years. The last time I did, in April if I recall, that nearly level trail was covered with ice. If I ever do walk on that trail in April again, I'll be sure and have the ice cleats with me.

Of course, not much of my winter or April walking these days is on icy trails. It's generally in our yard or driveway.

Now when I walk out to the car or to the mailbox or to put sunflower seeds down for those poor winter critters who don't have L.L. Bean ice cleats, I no longer step gingerly along to avoid falling. Those cleats do the job.

It's great to be a great outdoors guy on winter ice.

I can't wait for April or early May.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2012